Former Air Force Chief Reveals Army Commander's Threat to Arrest Bolsonaro Over Coup Plot

The internal institutional resistance that helped prevent a constitutional crisis in Brazil after the 2022 presidential election has been documented in stark detail by the former Air Force Commander, who reveals that the then-Army Commander threatened to arrest President Jair Bolsonaro if he attempted a coup d’état. Lieutenant Brigadier Carlos de Almeida Baptista Júnior, who led the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) until January 2023, recounts in his new book that General Marco Antônio Freire Gomes, the Army Commander at the time, directly confronted Bolsonaro’s attempts to subvert the election result.

The former Air Force chief’s testimony confirms that the firm stance of the military’s top brass was the critical barrier that stopped the post-election political turmoil from escalating into an unconstitutional power grab. According to Baptista Júnior, the Army Commander, General Freire Gomes, told Bolsonaro he would be placed under arrest if the then-president followed through with a plan to use "exceptional measures" to annul the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The former Air Force chief was one of the key witnesses in the subsequent legal process that ultimately led to Bolsonaro’s conviction for attempting a coup.

Baptista Júnior's book, Eu disse não — Uma trincheira antigolpista ('I Said No — An Anti-Coup Trench'), offers a firsthand account of the fraught weeks following the October 2022 run-off election. It describes meetings where Bolsonaro and his allies presented commanders with a draft decree—referred to as the "minuta do golpe"—intended to invalidate the election, arrest Supreme Court Justices, and keep the defeated president in office. Baptista Júnior recounts refusing to even accept a copy of the document, declaring, “The air force will not take part in this,” before leaving the room.

The resistance within the military was not unanimous. While the Army and Air Force commanders refused to join the plot, the then-Navy Commander, Admiral Almir Garnier Santos, was the only chief of a branch to put his force "at the disposal" of the exceptional measures discussed. The collective refusal by General Freire Gomes and Lieutenant Brigadier Baptista Júnior, however, meant the president did not have the unanimous institutional backing necessary to move forward with a large-scale military intervention.

The book's details provide new evidence for foreign readers on the institutional checks that held in Brazil during a period of high political tension, demonstrating how key individuals within the military structure prioritized their oath to the constitution over the sitting president. The release of this account comes as the legal fallout from the 2022 coup attempt continues, with several high-ranking military and political figures facing charges for their roles in the conspiracy.